Interesting research about riding surfaces and soundness which suggests the variety of terrain that hunters cover is perhaps a key factor
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/horse-care/vet-advice/impact-of-riding-surfaces-on-soundness-275642
Great timing on resurrecting this thread as hunt season is beginning. From reading, some of you are in wild hunts! My last hunt season, I think there were 3 hunts in a row where there was no jumping so basically a fast trail ride! And these are hardy horses not built for grace and speed. Most hunts I was on had 5-10 jumps, most 2 1/2 feet but I did jump one 3’er. Over the course of the year, my event horse had a more grueling schedule by far than my hunt horse.
Lots of good points written here. I would only add a couple more:
First, IMO, it is best to start early–cubbing season is when the pace is slower and can allow a horse to get used to the varying terrain, including pavement. A horse needs to learn how to trot on pavement and gallop through mud.
Another major benefit are the transitions. We know how important transitions are to build strength. In a hunt, horses learn very quickly how to slow down or halt on a flash. Yes, there are times when getting a good half halt is hard, but really the horse is adjusting and re-adjusting constantly according to the pace.
The last point has been mentioned already, which is that some horses just aren’t hardy enough, period. I think if you start early and slowly you can support longevity, but for some the terrain/ distance is too much.
After pondering this question a bit more, I think one difference is that it’s harder to keep a horse serviceably sound whose job is going to go for 3-4 hours, so those horses disappear quickly from hunting. Whereas, a horse that is only going to be competing once every few weeks for a total ride time of about 15 minutes per competition (not including warm up), soundness issues can be manageable. So I would think that would lead to seeing more horses in eventing with soundness issues.
I’ll give an example, one of my hunt horses who also evented suddenly came up lame after a hunt. An examination revealed an arthritic knee, upon seeing the x-ray’s I retired him. Prior to that he had never taken an off step. I could have kept eventing him at novice and training with a proper medical and training management plan but there was no way I was going to hunt him anymore. There was just no way to manage his condition to hold up to hunting. So if I had kept him eventing you probably would have seen a horse that upon coming out of the trailer would have head bobbed but then walked out of it.
[QUOTE=JER;7825181]
The cognitive load is also different in hunting and in eventing. I would think that, at least at the ULs, the cognitive load of novel XC questions, taken solo at UL speed, is considerably more than going with a group in the hunt, often over familiar country.
The demands of cognitive load (and the anticipation of cognitive load) impact physiological performance. More on that, with links to (human) studies, here.[/QUOTE]
I cannot read the linked article, but it did have me do a goggle search on the topic and I have to say, it is both fascinating and enlightening.
that fatigue that “at first sight might appear an imperfection of our body, is on the contrary one of its most marvelous perfections. The fatigue increasing more rapidly than the amount of work done saves us from the injury which lesser sensibility would involve for the organism” so that “muscular fatigue also is at bottom an exhaustion of the nervous system.”
This written over 100 years ago. There has always been this view of mind over matter, but now we add mind effects matter in how it affects our bodies (and perhaps even the bodies of animals).
I’ve never done a Hunt, but from descriptions, the action is not that far removed from that standard flight response, go straight, go fast, avoid complicated things for they will slow you down. Compare that to UL Eventing which instead continually puts complicated things in from of the horse, who’s natural tendency would be to avoid a skinny, a corner or some drop, water bank, bounce question. Now they have to “figure it out”, because we’ve trained them so. We then require them to push past the mental fatigue which is really telling them to stop it which maybe in turn starts to build up long term physical effects. At the least it is an interesting area of potential discovery.
[QUOTE=JP60;8311451]
I’ve never done a Hunt, but from descriptions, the action is not that far removed from that standard flight response, go straight, go fast, avoid complicated things for they will slow you down. Compare that to UL Eventing which instead continually puts complicated things in from of the horse, who’s natural tendency would be to avoid a skinny, a corner or some drop, water bank, bounce question.[/QUOTE]
Wow, this just made my brain click! Don’t you love that? I have a very dominant mare who physically has no problem jumping, and even enjoys it, but in some situations insists on turning each jump into a battle. She is now pretty reliable in stadium, and hunter pace jumps are mostly fine, but she can be a pill x-c. I’ve been trying to figure out why she does it, since it ends up being 3x more work for her to refuse than to just do it and she’s naturally lazy. And this just clicked–she just doesn’t see the point, so, being dominant, she is challenging my decision, and to her, the mere fact that I wouldn’t chose to avoid the obstacle shows that I’m not to be trusted to make decisions. This makes so much sense now–she’s OK in stadium because she’s learned that it is a game, so it has a purpose she can accept. And in hunter pacing it is often more work to go around than over, so that too has an acceptable purpose. But x-c jumps are easier to go around, so why bother jumping (“duh!”)… I just need to figure out how to teach her the x-c “game” 
Seems so obvious now… So much of riding her is between the ears and not the legs :lol: Thank you JP60! And sorry for de-railing the thread…
Interesting that this is resurrected. Timely!
I do think that hunting is mentally very stressful for some horses. I have had more than one that just could not relax. Initially we thought that one of them was overly excited because he was having so much fun, squealing and bucking along, until we scoped him and found grade 3 ulcers. And it may be that we put a lot in FRONT of our horses in eventing but xc is very short compared to a day of hunting.
Looking forward to getting back out this year but it will be later in the season this year. My calendar has a bunch of events left on it!
